The present invention relates to a feeding arrangement, and more particularly to an arrangement for feeding rod-shaped workpieces to a machine tool.
There are already known various machine tools, in particular lathes, which perform material-removing operations on rod-shaped workpieces. In connection with such machine tools, it is already known to support the rod-shaped workpiece along its length, particularly by accommodating the rod-shaped workpiece in a tubular guide member. Experience of this type of arrangement has shown that, especially when the workpiece rotates in the guide member, the latter is subjected to oscillations which, when the guide member is rigidly mounted on a support structure, are transmitted to such support structures and via the same to the environment of the machine tool, which is a very undesirable situation.
In order to avoid this disadvantage, it is already known to provide a feeding arrangement in which such oscillations are damped so that their transmission to the support structure is avoided. In one of such conventional arrangements, the support structure includes a jacket tube and a guide member is accommodated in the jacket tube with spacing therefrom, the spacing being filled with a flowable material, particularly sand. The edge portions of the jacket tube and the guide member are rigidly and sealingly connected to one another so as to prevent the flowable material from escaping from the spacing. However, this arrangement is disadvantageous in several respects. First of all, the connection of the end portions of the jacket tube and the guide member to one another constitutes oscillation transmitting bridges which impair the oscillation damping characteristic of this arrangement. Furthermore, when it is necessary to substitute a new guide member for the one previously used, either because the previous guide member has been worn out, or because it is desired to feed rod-shaped workpieces of different diameters into the machine tool, it is necessary to replace the entire assembly. This, of course, is very disadvantageous because it requires keeping in stock a plurality of such complete assemblies, rather than just an assortment of guide members of different diameters.